Our two door 1957

[Iain Hall]

I am delighted to report that the $50 Barina (Suzuki swift clone) actually runs and more importantly it runs well despite having been a cubby house for some children for the last couple of years. The interior is crap the brakes don’t work at all the Radiator leaks but after some argy bargy I managed to coax it into life, as it happens the choke was stuck closed and once I wedged that open with a screw driver it started with a roar. Tomorrow my daughter and I are going to fix some wires (for the lights and indicators) that were cut in the process of freeing the steering lock and then once we ascertain how well they work we can begin removing the engine and stripping the car of anything useful for the Morris.

As it stands we will be using the following ;

Engine

Complete electrical system

instruments (to be modified ),

Exhaust (to be modified)

Fuel lines (feed, return and vent line for charcoal canister )

brake lines hard and flexible

As the radiator is shot with some leaks in the core I will have to find another and a mate with an old Nissan Pintara may have something suitable

Its definitely progress to have acquired this car and I will post some photos once we start to dismember it tomorrow

Anyone would think that its Christmas or something ;)

[Iain Hall]

After a couple of days of steady graft the engine is out of the Barina and now sitting in the Morris engine bay and as the photos below show it seems that it will fit pretty well.

The engine was originally sitting at about a 20 degree angle and I have it perfectly upright so I may have to make an adaptor to bring the carb back to a level orientation.

The front pulley is currently sitting on the front cross member and It needs to be about 20mm higher so that the fan belt can be changed.

There is room for a radiator here and I want to get a wide radiator probably from somne sort of FWD Jap car so that I can have two fans one each side of the engine

There are a couple of protuberances on the distributor boss that I can trim down a bit and this my just be enough clearance from the cross member especially if I move the motor 10mm forward I think that the back of the motor should be sitting a little lower but I won’t know for sure until I get a gearbox connected to it

The water outlet on the manifold will clearly need to be reworked I will make and adaptor that allows me to have it exit in a better direction, likewise the heater fixture will need to be different

[MarkyB]

Would it make life a lot harder to retain the tilt?
I assume the oil pick up in the sump and the dipstick will also need work if you have the engine up straight.

[Iain Hall]

Yeah Marky I had thought of that, and I may well have to get the sump and pick up from a Samurai (which is upright because the gearbox won't want to be tilted, when it comes down to it I may be a good way to go to get a Samurai inlet manifold as well. Still I think that the Suzuki engine will do very well as a replacement for the A serries lump , it gives a modest increase in power and a big saving in weight which is a winning combo as far as I'm concerned.
The weight of the engine is not sufficient to depress the front suspension much at all though which means that I will have to lower the torsion bars by two or even three splines. hopefully that won't mean that the ride will be too harsh though.

[MarkyB]

Did you manage to weigh the new engine?
Sounds like a good plan to use bits off the Samurai, less fabrication means a faster build.

[Iain Hall]

No Marky
I haven't done that yet but I should get a chance to do that later today when I pull it out of the engine bay its bloody light though because my lifting gear consists of two double pulley blocks and some rope which lifted it with ease.

I'm off on a two hour drive to my brother's farm to collect parts today where I will to get a "loaner" gearbox so that I can work out my engine placement properly and then I can fabricate the mounts and do a whole lot of actual building rather that just dismantling cleaning and planning.
I have a long list of bits that I hope to liberate from his treasure trove of Morris goodies so its a quick breakfast and then I'm hitting the road.

[Iain Hall]

Ok Guys I have made some progress fitting the engine and working out how to fabricate the engine mounts.
In the first instance I discovered that the Barina has a different spline on its gearbox shaft so that I will need to get a sierra clutch plate for the purposes of working out the engine mounts I have just taken the clutch and pressure plate off the engine.
sadly it proved too bloody hard to get the Engine with its gearbox into place with the front connecting piece of the chassis in place so I have cut it out and I will be making a removable section to repalce it once I have the mounts finished
My brother reckons that a mate of his has a sierra sump and pick up and inlet manifold which will make the motor run properly without me having to stuff around fabricating special parts the cost will be a bottle of bourbon.

On the drivers side I have decided to ditch the engine mount that I originally made in favour of just using a 3mm plate drilled to accept the Subaru mount this makes it low enough for me to rework the original mount to come off the bottom of the alternator bracket to make the connection to the block stronger I have also modified part of the bracket so that it transfers some of the load to two of the original mounting points this should be more than adequate .

On the other side of the block it is necessary to provide room for the lower radiator hose connection (I have got the radiator out of a Camry which is wide and thin) so I am using one of the original cut down mounts that I made in association with an extensive re working of the Suzuki bracket. I have cut that in half and adapted one side to bolt to the unused air con mounting spigots on the block and the other to the front most of the original spigots with a bit of jiggery pokery I have arrived at this rather complicated shape.

For the rear I will be using the gearbox rubber mount from the Barina and adapting the the Morris minor gearbox cross member to suit. this should not be that difficult to get right. but I will also be making provision for my solution to the lack of a speedo drive with the Sierra gearbox, the plan is to use an O ring as a drive belt from the tail-shaft dust cover on the front uni joint running to a pulley attached to the speedometer drive from the front wheel of a motorcycle, Now I have one from an 1985 Fz750 Yamaha that should do the job once I calculate the right diameter for the pulley I may even be in the right ball park for an accurate speedo if I do my sums right!

As can bee seen the original Barina exhaust manifold has an outlet that will allow the exhaust to go down between the block and the chassis rail. Now as much as I would like to have a nice set of extractors using the original manifold is the best low-cost option the pipe will go down and under the chassis rail and then run in the same place as usual .

[Iain Hall]

The most significant thing that I have done over the last few days is to make the gearbox mount. I agonised over the design of this for a long time and in the end I decided to utilise the original Morris mount rubbers on the original cross member this bolts to the fabricated mount that I made from steel which bolts to the Suzuki rear mount spigot on the gearbox. I will have to modify the cover to clear the gearbox but hopefully it won't look too bad when I have finished

To get the gearbox where I wanted it I had to remove one of the four electric switches mounted on the gear case ( Green arrow) these are used to indicate which gear you are in on the Suzuki and its not something that I will have working in the car so they can be deleted with out a problem. The bolt (blue arrow) is just touching the steering rack and when I get my own gearbox I will repalce it with a countersunk Allen bolt to give enough clearance for motor movement

My brother gave me this panel from another Morris and I may use it to replace the now removed battery box but now that I have the engine mounted up and its clear that I don't need to have any recess to clear the distributor I may yet go for just a plain piece of steel to fill the hole in the fire wall.

Managed to get the samurai manifold as well as a sump and pick-up and here you see that I have test fitted it to the motor just to see how it looks in the Morris. The top of the thermostat housing will have to be replaced because it is just too corroded. when I tried to take it off both of the bolts were seized and snapped off! Fortunately I was able to get the broken bolts out.